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Journalism of Courage
Appointing commissions of inquiries has almost become a reflex action for the Government, but the decision taken last month to set up a judicial panel to inquire into the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose mystery shows a habit gone too far.
On March 25, the Ministry of Home Affairs MHA solemnly announced that this commission, at considerable expense, would finally unravel the truth about whether Bose was alive or dead, notwithstanding the fact that even if he had survived the air crash, he would have long crossed the geriatric barrier. But Home Ministry officials add they are only following the wishes of the Calcutta High Court.
Critics of the commission point out that a judicial panel cannot function as an investigator who can actually establish authentic facts so many years after the event. Says a cynical MHA official: 8220;It was either a judicial commission or a CBI inquiry, we chose the easier way out.8221;
The formal appointment of this new commission will inevitably lead to acquisition of the accoutrements of such panels spacious offices, preferably in Luyten8217;s Delhi, large secretarial staff, and housing and other facilities for the officials reporting to the commission. The last panel appointed by the Government, the Wadhwa commission, to inquire into the Graham Staines killings in Orissa, is said to have already made several demands to the MHA regarding office space, secretarial staff and even high-tech tele-conferencing facilities.
But what do judicial commissions, appointed by the Government to examine issues ranging from riots, scandals and assassinations to inter-state disputes actually achieve? Critics ofcommissions note that their recent history has been extremely spotty. Apart from taking inordinately long to deliver reports, they seldom achieve anything. A walk down the dusty corridors of Vigyan Bhavan, which has nearly become a commission haven after hosting the infamous Jain Commission and now the Wadhwa commission, shows the history of this hailed and 8220;failed8221; panels:
The trend of governments dismissing commission reports can, in fact, be traced back to the Shah Commission, which looked into the Emergency excesses. Mrs Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi deposed before the panel, which had been set up by the Janata Party government. However, the commission met an ignominious fate, dismissed by the Congress as 8220;partisan8221; and 8220;biased8221;, the moment Mrs Gandhi came back to office.The fact that panel reports are not actually judicial findings is one of the crucial failings of commissions of enquiries, according to critics. The Commission of Enquiry Act, 1952, enables the 8220;appropriate government toset up a commission to inquire into any definite matter of public importance8217; providing a resolution to that effect has been passed by Parliament or the state legislature as the case may be8221;. It was only in 1990 that the Act was amended to make it compulsory for the Government not only to submit the report to Parliament or the state Assembly as the case may be, but to also submit the action taken on it.
However, if the Government finds the final report inconvenient, it can simply dismiss it, as the Maharashtra Government did in the case of the Srikrishna Commission report on the Mumbai riots after the fall of the Babri Masjid. While rejecting the report, the then Maharashtra chief minister, Manohar Joshi, accused Justice Srikrishna of being biased against Hindus. This infuriated the judiciary, with former chief justice of India Justice J.S. Verma, who inquired into the security aspect of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, saying judges should head a commission only on matters of great public importance. Inhis own case, Verma remarkably managed to finish his inquiry in little over a year and used to hold commission hearings in the morning and attend the court in the afternoon. The Verma Commission cost the exchequer around Rs 29 lakh.
Members of the judiciary are increasingly becoming critical about being drafted to chair commissions. Justice Jeevan Reddy, Law Commission Chairman and a Supreme Court chief justice, feels 8220;no sitting or retired judges should accept any commission of inquiry which has political overtones8221;. Justice Bakhtavar Lentin of the Bombay High Court, describing the Government8217;s commission fever, had said on an earlier occasion: 8220;Commissions of inquiry are a waste of time and public money.8221;
